Gothic Performance: Dark Folklore and Subversive Ritual

Gothic subcultures formed in the late 1970s in both the US and Great Britain. This subculture rose in response to the post-punk music genre, however, modern goths are united primarily through aesthetic and performance. This aesthetic pulls from a variety of sources, with themes of darkness, both in color and mood. Gothic performance and spaces allow members of these folk groups to play with the presentation of gender and gothic spaces act as havens for performance. Gothic subcultures are highly enduring, perhaps due to the lack of centralized ideology, wherein what it is to belong is within an aesthetic context.